Fauchard, the ranger's, cottage lay at the meeting of two drives; all the trees here were pines, and the air was filled with their balsam.
It was, even in 1869, an old-fashioned cottage, set back in a clearing amidst the trees. The tall pines seemed to have stepped back to give it room, and were eternally blowing their compliments to it. Ah, they were fine fellows to live amongst, those pine-trees, true noblemen of the forest, erect as grenadiers, spruce, perfumed; and the blue sky looked never so beautiful as when seen over their tops.
The cottage had an old wooden gallery under the upper windows, and an outside staircase gone to decay; the porch was covered with rambler roses; on the apex of the red-tiled roof pigeons white as pearls sat in strings, fluttering now to the ground, and now circling in the blue above the trees like a ring of smoke.
It was a place wherein to taste the beauty of summer to the very dregs. Dawn, coming down the pine-set drive, touching the branches with her fingers and setting the woods a-shiver, peeped into Fauchard's cottage as she never peeped into the Tuileries. Noon sat with folded hands before the rose-strewn porch, singing to herself a song which mortals heard in the crooningsof the pigeons. Dusk set glow-worms, like little lamps, amidst the roses of the porch.
When we arrived, Fauchard was out, but his wife was in and received us. Madame Fauchard was over seventy; a woman as clean and bright as a new pin, active as a cat; a woman who had brought twelve children into the world, yet had worked all her life as hard as a man.
Oh, yes! she would be very glad to take a lodger, if he would be satisfied with their simple place. She showed us over the little house. It smelt sweet as lavender, and the spare room was so close to the trees that the pine-branches almost brushed the window.
"It will be lovely for him," said Eloise, when, having settled about terms with Fauchard's wife, we were taking our way back to the Pavilion. "But will he find it dull when he is not writing his music?"
"If he does," said I, "he can come over to the Pavilion and see you. Then he will love Etiolles, where he will, no doubt, find friends; and he has the woods, and Fauchard will take him out with him. Oh, no; he will not find it dull."
"Toto," said Eloise, as though suddenly remembering something, just as we reached the drawbridge.
"Yes."
"You remember the day before yesterday you said you would show me over the château the next time you came. Let us go over it now."
"Very well," I replied. "Wait for me here, and I will get the key."
The Château de Saluce had not been lived in foryears—ever since my mother's death, in fact. But it had been well cared for. Fires had been lit every fortnight or so to air the rooms during the autumn and winter; every room had been left in exactly the same state it was in at my mother's death, and the gardens had been tended and looked after as though the family were in residence.
"When you marry," said my guardian, "it will make a very nice present for your wife. Let it! Good God, Patrique, are we shopkeepers?"
"Here's the key," said I, coming back to Eloise, who had waited for me at the angle of the drawbridge. She was standing with her elbow on the drawbridge rail, and her eyes fixed on the water. She seemed paler than when I had left her; and when I touched her arm she drew her gaze away from the water lingeringly, as if fascinated by something she had seen there.
"Toto," said Eloise, "are there fish in the moat?"
"I never hear of any. Why?"
"I saw something white and flat," said Eloise, "deep down. I first thought it was a flat-fish, then it looked like a ball of mist in the water deep down, and then it looked like a—a face."
"A face!" said I, laughing, and looking over the bridge-rail and down into the water.
"I know it was only fancy," said Eloise. "Perhaps I went asleep for a second and dreamed it. It felt like a dream, and I felt just as a person feels wakened up from sleep when you touched me on the arm just now. It was a man's face, pale, and—and—— Ah, well, it was perhaps only my imagination!"
She shivered, and took my arm; and I led her along a by-path that took us to the carriage drive and the front door of the château.
The great hall, with its oak gallery and ceiling painted by Boucher, echoed our footsteps and our voices.
This echo was the defect of the hall, as I have often heard my father say. The builder of the place had, by some mischance, imprisoned an echo. She was there, and nothing would dislodge her—everything had been tried. Architects from Paris had been consulted—even the great Violette Le Duc himself—without avail. She was there like a ghost, and nothing would drive her out. Whether she was hiding in the gallery or the coigns of the ceiling, who can say? But one thing was certain: her voice changed. It was sometimes louder, sometimes lower, sometimes harsher, sometimes sweeter; a change caused, I believe, by atmospheric influence. But superstition takes no account of atmospheric influence or natural causes. Superstition said that the echo was the voice of Marianne de Saluce, a girl famed for her beautiful voice, who, like Antonina in the Violon de Cremone, had died singing, under tragic circumstances, one winter day here in the hall of the château, in the late years of the reign of his sun-like Majesty Louis XIV.
"The blood flowing from her mouth had mixed with her song," said the old chronicle; and this, with the fact that she was wild, wayward, and bad, gave superstition groundwork for a conceit not without charm.
"Marianne!" cried Eloise, when I had told her thistale; and "Marianna—Marianne!" the ghostly voice replied.
Eloise laughed, and Marianne laughed in reply all along the gallery, as though she were running from room to room; and, to my mind, made fanciful by the recollection of the old legend, it seemed that there was something sinister and sneering in the laughter of Marianne.
Then I called out myself, making my voice as deep as possible; and the answer was so horrible as to make us both start. For it was as though a woman, leaning over the gallery and imitating my man's voice, were mocking me.
I have never heard anything more hobgoblin, if I may use the expression.
"Ugh!" said Eloise. "Don't speak to her any more. Speak in whispers; don't give her the satisfaction of answering. Toto, are those men in armour your ancestors?"
"They are the shells of old Saluces," I replied. "Eloise, do you remember the man in armour in the tower of Lichtenberg—the one who struck the bell?"
"Don't speak of him," said Eloise; "at least, here. The place is ghostly enough. Shall we go upstairs?"
We went up the broad staircase, peeped into the sitting-rooms and boudoirs of the first floor, and then up another flight of stairs to the floor of the bedrooms.
"See the funny little staircase?" said Eloise, when we had looked into the bedrooms, ghostly and deserted. She was pointing to a narrow staircase leading from the corridor we were in.
"Let's see where it goes," said I, for it was years since I had explored this part of the château. "It looks ugly and wicked enough to lead to a Bluebeard's chamber."
But it did not. It led to a turret room, with four windows looking north, south, east, and west. A charming little room, with a painted ceiling, on which cupids disported themselves with doves.
Faded rose-coloured couches were placed at each window; on a table in the centre lay some old books, dust on their covers. The view was superb.
One window showed the forest, another the Seine winding blue through the country of spring, another the country of fields and gardens, vineyards, and far white roads.
The smoke of Etiolles made a wreath above the poplar-trees.
We sat down on a couch by the window overlooking Etiolles. We were so close together that I could feel the warmth of her arm against mine, and her hand hanging loose beside her was so close to mine that I took it without thinking. The picture outside, the picture of Nature and the wind-blown trees over which the larks were carolling and the small white clouds drifting, contrasted strangely with the room we were in and the silence of the great empty house. The little hand lying in mine suddenly curled its little finger around my thumb.
"Eloise!" I said.
She turned her head, her breath, sweet and warm, met my face. Then I kissed her, not as a brother but as a lover.
And I did not love her at all. Nor did she love me. It was just as though the great tide of Nature had seized us, innocently floating, and flung us together, drifted us together for a little while, and then let us part; for we never referred to the matter again after that day.
But a cloud had arisen on my horizon, a cloud no larger than Eloise's hand.
I installed Franzius at Fauchard's cottage.
He brought his luggage with him, done up in a brown-paper parcel, under his right arm; under his left he carried his violin. I will never forget him that afternoon as he stepped from the train at Evry station, where Eloise and I were waiting to receive him. Such a Bohemian, bringing the very pavement of Paris with him, the music of Mirlitons, the gaslight of the Rue Coquenard, and the sawdust of La Closerie de Lilas.
Unhappy man! Paris had marked him for her own. Heaven itself could never entirely remove from his exterior the stains and the scorching, the lines around his eyes drawn during the early hours in dancing hall and café, the bruised look that poverty, hunger, and cold impress upon the servants who wait upon theMuses—the lower servants, whose place is the courtyard! But the stains and the scorching had not reached his soul; like Shadrach he had passed through the burning fiery furnace and come out a living man.
Besides his luggage and his violin he was carrying some rolls of music-paper.
We walked to the Pavilion, and from there through the woods to Fauchard's cottage. The bees were working in the little garden, and the pearl-white pigeons were drawn up in parade order on the roof as if to receive us. Never seemed so loud the shouting and laughter of the birds, never so beautiful the rambler roses round the porch! The humble things of Nature seemed to have put themselves en fête to welcome back their own.
I did not go to Etiolles for some days after this. A new era of my life had begun.
And now it was that the truth of the Vicomte's philosophy was borne in upon me:
"You are getting yourself into a position from which you cannot escape with honour. You cannot marry Mademoiselle Feliciani, for Paris would not receive her as your wife."
What was I to do with her? Of course, a man of the world would have answered the question promptly; but I was not a man of the world. And the summer went on; and I was taken about to balls and fêtes by my guardian, and as I was young, not bad-looking, and wealthy, I was well received.
The summer went on, the cuckoos hoarsened in the forest of Sénart, the splendour of Nature deepened, thecorn in the fields at Evry was tall and yellow, the grapes in the vineyards full-globed, and the dragon-flies had attained the zenith of their magnificence, and all day mirrored themselves in the moat of the Pavilion. Franzius, lost in his music and in the paradise in which he found himself, had got back years of his youth. His genius, clipped and held back, had suddenly burst into bloom. He was projecting and carrying out a great work—an opera founded on an old German legend. Carvalho had inspected some of the scores, and had become enthusiastic. All was well with Franzius, but not with Eloise. As the summer went on she seemed to droop.
At first I thought it was only my fancy, but by the end of July I was certain.
Franzius was a frequent visitor at the Pavilion. When he was there with us she seemed bright and gay, but when we found ourselves alone she grew abstracted and sad. Her cheeks had lost colour, and Madame Ancelot declared that she did not eat. The meaning of all this was plain—at least, I thought so. She cared for me.
This thought, which would have given a lover joy, filled me with deep sadness. I had offered and given the girl my protection, Heaven knows, from the highest motives. And now behold the imbroglio! If she cared for me, it was my duty to marry her and give her a future. If I married her, society would not receive her as my wife. I had, in fact, in trying to make her future happy, gone a long way towards ruining my own. Heaven knows, if I had loved her,little I would have cared for society; but the mischief and the misery of the thing was just that—I did not love her.
I felt a repulsion towards her whenever the idea of love came into my mind, with her image. It was as if a man, who, tasting a fruit in a sudden fit of hunger and finding it nauseous and insipid, were suddenly condemned to eat of that fruit for ever after, and none other.
And I had the whole of life before me, and I would be tied to a woman all through life—to a woman I did not love! And the worst part of the whole business was the fact that I could get out of the whole thing as easily as a man steps out of a cab—as easily as a man crushes a flower. And that was what bound me.
To stay in the affair, to be made party to my own social ruin, was the most difficult business on earth.
Days of argument I spent with myself. The two terrible logicians that live in every man's brain fought it out; there was no escaping from the conclusion: "If you have made this girl love you, you must ask her to be your wife, for under the guise of a brother's friendship you have treated her just as any of these Boulevard sots and fools would have treated her. Oh, don't talk of Nature and sudden impulse—that is just the argument they would use! You did this thing unpremeditatedly, we will admit. Well, you have your whole life to meditate over the reparation and to make it. Faults of this description are ugly toys made by the devil, and they have to be paid for with eitheryour happiness or your soul. Of course, you can treat her as your mistress; and she, poor child, tossed already about and bruised by the waves of chance, would be content. But would you? Would you be content to thrust still deeper in the mud of life this creature that fate has thrown on your hands? The powers of darkness have surely conspired against this unfortunate being. She, a daughter of the Felicianis, has been dragged in the mire of Paris. Would you be on the side of darkness too?"
That was what my heart said against all the arguments of my head. And so it remained.
"To-morrow," said I, "I will go to Etiolles, and I will ask Eloise to be my wife."
That afternoon, walking in the Rue de Rivoli, I saw Franzius—Franzius, whom I imagined to be at Fauchard's cottage, green leagues away from Paris! He was walking rapidly. I had to run to catch him up; and when he turned his face I saw that he was in trouble. He was without his violin.
"Why, Franzius," I cried, "what are you doing here, and what ails you? Have you lost your violin?"
"Oh, my friend!" said Franzius. "What ails me? I am in trouble. No, I have not lost my violin, I have forgotten it—it has ceased to be, for me. Ah, yes, there is no more music in life! The birds have ceased singing, the blue sky has gone—Germany calls me back."
"Good heavens!" I said. "What's the matter? You haven't left Etiolles for good, have you?"
"Oh, no! I am going back for a few days. Icame to Paris to-day to seek relief—to hear the streets—to forget——"
"To forget what? Come, tell me what has happened."
"Not now," said Franzius. "I cannot tell you now. To-morrow I will call on you at your house in the Place Vendôme. Then I will tell you."
That was all I could get from him; and off he went, having first wrung both my hands, the tears running down his face so that the passers-by turned to look and wonder at him.
"Come early to-morrow," I called out after him as he went. Then I pursued my way home to the Place Vendôme, wondering at the meaning of what I had seen and troubled at heart.
Next morning I sent Joubert to my guardian's apartments with a message craving an interview.
It was nine o'clock, and the old gentleman received me in his dressing-room and in his dressing-gown. Beril had just shaved him, and he was examining his rubicund, jovial face in a hand-mirror. The place smelt of Parma violets and shaving-soap. It was like the dressing-room of a duchess, so elaborate were the fittings and so complex the manicure instruments and toilet arrangements set out on the dressing-table.
"Leave me, Beril," said the old gentleman, when he had made a little bow to my reflection in the big mirror facing him. Then, taking up a tooth instrument—for, like M. Chateaubriand, he kept on his toilet-table a set of dental instruments with which he doctored his own pearly teeth—he motioned me to take a seat and proceed.
"I have come this morning, monsieur, to place my position before you and to tell you of a serious step in life which I have decided to take."
"Yes?" replied the Vicomte, tenderly tapping with the little steel instrument on a front tooth, as though he were questioning it as to its health.
"You told me once that I was getting myself into a difficult position. Well, as a matter of fact——"
"You have?"
"Yes, monsieur."
Then I told him everything.
When I had finished, the old gentleman put away the tooth instrument, folded his dressing-gown more closely round him, and examined contemplatively his hands, of which he was very proud.
"The only thing that would have surprised me," said he at last, "would have been if all this had not occurred. Well, now, let us make the best of it. We will assure her future, and she will forget."
"Monsieur, I am this morning about to offer Mademoiselle Feliciani my hand in marriage."
My guardian, who had been attending to his left-hand little finger with an ivory polisher, turned in his chair and looked at me. He saw I was in earnest. The blow was severe, yet his power of restraint was so great that his face did not alter.
Only the hand which held the ivory manicure instrument trembled slightly.
"You have decided on this step?"
"Absolutely, monsieur."
"You know, of course, it will mean your social ruin, and, as you do not love the girl, the ruin of your happiness?"
"I am aware of all that, monsieur—bitterly."
My guardian sighed, rubbed his chin softly, and, for a moment, seemed plunged in a profound reverie.
"I am growing old," said he. "I have no children. I looked upon you almost as a child of mine. I made plans for your future, a magnificent future; I took pleasure to introduce you to my friends, in seeing youwell dressed. With the Emperor at your right hand you would have made a very great figure in society, monsieur. Ah, yes, you might have been what you would! And now, in a moment, this has all vanished. Excuse me if I complain. Of course, as you are not of full age I could compel you not to take this step. I could, as a matter of fact, sequestrate you; but I know your spirit, and I am not a believer in brute force. Well, well, what can I say? You come and tell me this thing—your suicide would sadden me less than this marriage which will be your social death. You are a man, and it is not for me to treat you as though you were a child. Think once again on the matter, and then—— Why, then act as your will directs."
He rang the bell for Beril to complete his toilet, and I left the room smitten to the heart. His unaffected sadness, his kindness, his straightforwardness would have moved me from my course if anything mortal could have done so.
Yet I left the room with my determination unshaken.
I was coming down the stairs when a footman accosted me on the first landing.
"A person has called to see you, monsieur, and I have shown him into the library."
I turned to the library, opened the door, and found myself engulfed in the arms of Franzius.
"Mind the violin, mind the violin!" I cried, for he was carrying it, and I felt the bridge snapping against my chest. Then I held him at arm's length.
He was radiant, laughing like a boy. He had comefrom Etiolles, all the way on foot, and all the joy that had been bottled up in him during the twenty-four miles' tramp had burst loose.
"And now," I said, laughing, too, from the infection of his gaiety, "what is it?"
"Oh, my friend," said Franzius, "she loves me!"
"Good heavens! Who?"
But you might just as well have questioned the Sud Express going full speed.
"Yesterday you saw me—I was in despair. I had not understood aright. She had not understood me. She thought I cared for nothing but my music; she did not know that my music was herself—that her soul had entered into me, that she was me——"
"But stay!" I cried, recalling to mind all the women at Etiolles, from Madame Fauchard to Elise, the station-master's pretty daughter; recalling to my mind all but the right one. "But, stay!"
"That she was me, that my music was her—that every strand of her golden hair, every motion of her lips, every——"
Ah, then it began to dawn on me!
"Franzius," I cried, suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, "Franzius, is it Mademoiselle Eloise?"
"They call her that," replied the stricken one, "but for me she is my soul."
Then I embraced Franzius. It was the first time in my life that I had "embraced" a man French fashion. He and his old violin I took in my arms, nearly crushing them. Fool! fool! Double fool that I was not to have seen it before! Her sadness when I waswith her, the way she lighted up when he was near! And I had fancied that she was in love with me!
There was a grain of cynical bitterness in that recollection, but so small a grain that it was swallowed up, perished for ever, in the honest joy that filled my heart.
I had done the right thing, I had prepared to sacrifice myself, and this was my reward.
Then the recollection of the old man upstairs came to me, and, bidding Franzius to wait for me, I ran from the room. I saw a servant on the stairs and called to him to bring wine and cigars to the gentleman in the library; then, two steps at a time, up I went to the dressing-room.
I knocked and opened the door without waiting for a reply. Beril was tying my guardian's cravat. I took him by the shoulders and marched him out of the room.
"Saved!" cried I to the astonished Vicomte as I stood with my back to the door and he stood opposite me, his striped satin cravat hanging loose and his hand half reaching for the bell.
Then I told him all, and he saw that I was not mad.
"Is he downstairs, this Monsieur Franzius?" asked my guardian when I had finished my tale and he had finished congratulating me.
"Yes."
"I would like to see him. Ask him to déjeûner."
"He's rather—— I mean, you know, he's a Bohemian; does not bother much about dress and that sort of thing—so you must not expect to see a Boulevardier."
"My dear sir," said the old man with delightful gaiety, "if one is in a burning building, does one trouble about the colour of the fire escape that saves one from destruction, or if it has been new painted? Ask him to déjeûner though he came dressed as a red Indian!"
Franzius, when I found him in the library, would not touch the wine or cigars I had ordered up; he was in a frame of mind far above such earthly things. I made him sit down, and, taking a seat opposite to him, listened while he told me the whole affair.
He declared that the idea of love for Eloise had never come to him of itself; he was far too humble to worship her, except as one worships the sun. It was his music that said to him: "She loves you, and you love her. Listen to me: Am I not beautiful? I am the child of your soul and hers; divine love has brought you together so that you might create me. I will exist for ever, for I am the child of two immortal souls."
"Then, my friend," said Franzius, "I knew what love was—it is the birth of music in the heart, it is the music itself, the little birds try to tell us this. I had loved her without knowing from the first day; and when knowledge came to me I was still dumb; dumb as a miser who speaks not of his gold; till yesterday, when I told her all. She cried out and ran from me, and hid herself in the house, and I thought she was offended. I thought she did not love me, I thought the music had lied to me, and that there was no God, that the flowers were fiends in disguise, the sun agoblin. I came to Paris, I walked here and there, I met you, my distress was great. Then I returned to Etiolles. It was evening, towards sunset, and, coming through the wood near the Pavilion, I saw her.
"She had taken her seat on the root of an old tree; her basket of needlework was by her side, and in her lap was an old coat; she had made me bring it to the Pavilion some days before, saying she would mend it. I thought she had forgotten it, but now it was in her lap; her needle was in her hand, and she had just finished mending a rent in the sleeve. Then she held it up as if to see were there any more to be done; then—she kissed it."
"So that——"
"Ah, my friend, all is right with me now. I have come home to the home that has been waiting for me all these weary years. Often when I have looked back at my wanderings I have said to myself, Why? It all seemed so useless and leading nowhere—such a zig-zag road here and there across Europe on foot, poor as ever when the year was done.But now I see that every footstep of that journey was a footstep nearer to her, and I praise God."
He ceased, and I bowed my head. The holy spirit of Love seemed present in that room, and I dared not break the sacred silence with words.
It was broken by the opening of the door, and the cheery voice of M. le Vicomte bidding me introduce him to my friend.
I shall never forget that déjeûner, and the kindness of my guardian to poor Franzius. The tall footmen who served us may have wondered at this very unaccustomed guest; but had the Emperor been sitting in Franzius' place M. le Vicomte could not have laid himself out more to please. And from no hidden motive. Franzius was his guest, he had invited him to déjeûner, he saw the Bohemian was ill at ease in his strange surroundings, and with exquisite delicacy only attainable by a man of good birth, trained in all the subtleties of life, he set himself the task of setting his guest at ease.
When the meal was over we went into the smoking-room; and then, and only then, did M. le Vicomte refer to the question of Eloise in a few well-chosen words.
Then he dismissed us as though we were schoolboys; and I took the musician off to see my apartments.
Now, I am Irish, or at least three parts Irish, and I suppose that accounts for some eccentricities in my conduct of affairs. I am sure that it accounts for the fact that my joy up to this had carried me along so irresistibly and so pleasantly that I had not once looked back.
It was when I opened the door of my sitting-room that memory, or perhaps conscience, woke up to deal my happiness a blow.
The man beside me knew nothing of Eloise's past. Or did he?
Never, I thought, as I looked at him. His happiness is new-born, it has been stained by no cloud. She has told him nothing.
I sat down and watched him as he roamed about the room, examining the works of art, the pictures, and the hundred-and-one things, pretty or quaint; costly toys for the grown-up.
I sat and watched him.
An overmastering impulse came upon me to go at once to Etiolles, see Eloise, and speak to her alone, if possible.
"Come," I said, "let us go down to the Pavilion. I want a breath of country air. Paris is smothering me. Shall we start?"
He went to the library to fetch his violin, and we left the house.
We took the train. It was a glorious September day; they were carting the corn at Evry; and the country, warm and mellow from the long, hot summer, was covered by the faintest haze, a gauze of heat that paled the horizon, making a diaphanous film from which the sky rose in a dome of perfect blue.
The little gardens by the way were filled with autumn flowers—stocks and hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies—simple and old-fashioned flowers, great bouquets with which God fills the hands of the poor,more beautiful than all the treasures of Parma and Bordighera.
A child of six, a son of one of the railway porters, bound also for Etiolles on a message, tramped with us. Franzius carried him on his shoulder part of the way, and bought him sweets at the village shop.
Eloise was not at the Pavilion. Madame Ancelot said she had taken her sewing and was in the sun-garden of the Château, and there we sought for her. This garden, small and protected from the east wind by a palisaded screen, was the prettiest place imaginable. It was at the back of the Château, and steps from it led up to the rose-garden. It had in its centre a square marble pond from which a Triton blew thin jets of water for ever at the sky.
Eloise was seated on a small grassy bank; her workbasket was beside her; and she was engaged in some needlework which she held in her lap.
She made a pretty picture against the hollyhocks which lined the bank; and prettier still she looked when, hearing our footsteps, she cast her work aside and ran to meet us.
With a swift glance at Franzius, she ran straight to me and took both my hands in hers.
"He has told you?" said she, looking up full and straight into my face, full and straight with perfect candour and firm eyes more liquid and beautiful than the blue of heaven washed by the early dawn.
"He has told me," I replied, holding her hands in mine.
All the sadness and pain that my past relationshipwith her had caused me was now banished, for I could read in her eyes, or, blind that I was, I thought I could read in her eyes, that the past was for her not in the new world in which she found herself.
We sat down on the little grassy bank, and talked things over, the three of us. Three people who had found a treasure could not have been more happily jubilant as we talked of the future.
"And you know," said I, "you will never want money. Franzius will be rich with his music; and even should he never care to write again, I have a large sum of money in trust for you. Oh, don't ask who gave it in trust for you both! It is there."
We talked till the dusk fell and star after star came out.
So dark was it when I left that a tiny point of light in Eloise's hair made me hold her head close to look. It was a glow-worm that had fallen from the bending hollyhocks.
It seemed to me like a little star that God had placed there as a portent of fortune and happiness.
When I got back to Paris my guardian was out.
I went to my rooms to think things over. My thoughts had received a new orientation. I remembered my delight that morning on finding myself free—free of all that heaven!
Ah, if I could only have loved her as Franzius did!
What, then, was this thing called Love, which I had never known, the thing which I had never guessed till to-day, till this evening, there in the sunk garden ofSaluce, in the dusk so filled with the sound of unseen wings and the music of an unknown tongue?
Some drawing things were on the table.
I have always been a fair artist, and sketching has been one of my few amusements.
Almost mechanically I took a pencil, and tried to sketch the face of Eloise Feliciani.
But it was not the face of Eloise Feliciani that appeared on the paper. I gazed on it, when it was finished, in troubled amazement. It was the face of a woman—yet it was also the portrait of a child. Ah, yes; beyond any doubt of memory it was the face of Margaret von Lichtenberg, the old portrait in the gallery of Schloss Lichtenberg! Yet it was the face, also, of little Carl!
"We will give them a good send-off," said my guardian, as, some days later, we discussed the matter of Eloise's wedding. "Let them be married at Etiolles; have the village en fête. I will settle for it all."
The proposition seemed good; nowhere could one find a more suitable spot for such a wedding than the little church of Etiolles; yet it met with opposition.
Franzius was not a man to forget his friends. He had many in the Latin Quarter, and he was a peasant born, with a peasant's instincts. Birth, marriage, and death, those three supreme events in the life of man, are more insistent in their ceremonial amidst the poor than the rich. To Franzius it would have been a strange thing to marry without inviting to the ceremony the people who were his friends; and the journey to Etiolles would be too far for some of these.
Then, it was impossible for the marriage to be solemnised in a church, for the simple reason that he was a Lutheran and Eloise had been born a Catholic. So it was arranged to take place on the 1st of October at the Mairie of the quarter which includes the Rue Dijon.
It was to be quite a simple affair, a wedding such as takes place every day amongst the bourgeoisie, withthe additional lustre that the presence of the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan would lend to the proceedings.
It was a lovely day. It had rained during the night, but the morning broke nearly cloudless, and there was that feeling of spring in the air, that freshness which comes sometimes in autumn like the reminiscence of May.
Franzius had slept the night at the Place Vendôme; and I must say, dressed in a brand-new suit of clothes and with a flower in his buttonhole, he never looked worse in his life. Dressed in his old clothes, with his violin under his arm, he was picturesque, but now he looked like a tailor out for a holiday, and I told him so, to keep up his spirits, as we breakfasted hurriedly and without appetite, but with a good deal of gaiety.
Eloise was to come from Saluce in one of the Vicomte's carriages, and he was to accompany her to the Mairie, where we were to wait for them. Noon was the hour of the ceremony; and when we arrived at the Mairie the place was crowded: four other couples, it seemed, were to be united that day, and we were third on the list.
The people whom Franzius had invited were there already: not many, scarcely a dozen, and mostly men, musicians with long hair and German accents; his landlady of the Rue Dijon and her daughter, a cripple dressed for the occasion in a newly starched white frock and blue sash; and a young lady of the sempstress type, pale-faced and modest, and seeming dazed with the grandeur of the officials in their chains and all the paraphernalia of the law.
For a moment a pang went to my heart to think that a daughter of the Felicianis was to be married here amidst these folks like one of them. But it soon passed. The Archbishop of Paris, the choir of Notre Dame, the congregated aristocracy of France, could not have added one whit to the beauty of the marriage or to its sanctity.
I had dreaded that in the fulness of his heart and his simplicity Franzius might have invited undesirable guests. The vision of Changarnier appearing like an evil beast had horrified me. But my fears were set at rest. Leave the simple-hearted alone, and they rarely make mistakes. Franzius' guests, humble though they might be, were of the aristocracy of the poor, good, kind-hearted, and honest people.
At ten minutes to noon the Vicomte arrived, with Eloise on his arm. How charming she looked, in that simple, old-fashioned wedding-gown which she had made for herself! And how charming the Vicomte was, insisting on being introduced to everyone, chatting, laughing, immeasurably above everyone else, yet suffusing the wedding-party with his own grace and greatness so that everyone felt elevated instead of dwarfed!
And I never have been able to determine in my mind whether it was natural goodness, or just gentility polished to its keenest edge, that made this old libertine so lovable.
After the ceremony carriages conveyed the wedding-party to the Café Royale in the Boulevard St. Michel.
The Vicomte had, through Beril, made allarrangements; and in a room flower-decked, and filled with the sunlight and sounds of the boulevard, we sat down to déjeûner.
Scarcely had we begun than the waiters announced two gentlemen, at the same time handing the Vicomte de Chatellan two cards. "Show them up," said my guardian, "and lay two more covers."
It was the great Carvalho, who, hearing indirectly from my guardian of the marriage, had come, bringing with him the director of the Opera.
You may be sure we made room for them. And what a good omen it seemed—better than a flight of white doves—these two well-fed, prosperous, commonplace individuals, who held the music of France in their hands, and the laurel-wreaths!
They did not stay long, just long enough to pay their compliments and drink success to the bride and bridegroom.
Just before departing, Carvalho whispered to me: "His opera is accepted. He will hear officially to-morrow. It will be produced in April, or, at latest, May."
"By the way," said my guardian, "how are you off for money?"
We were driving back from the station, having seen the newly married couple off on their honeymoon.
"Oh, pretty well," I replied. "Why do you ask?"
He did not seem to hear my reply, but sat gazing out of the carriage-window at the streets we were passing through, and the people, gazing at them contemplatively and from Olympian heights, after the fashion of a god gazing upon beetles.
When we reached the Place Vendôme, he drew me into the library.
"I have been on the point of speaking to you several times lately about money," said he. "Not about personal expenses, but about the bulk of your fortune. It is invested in French securities. Clement, our lawyer, has the number and names of them. They are all good securities, paying good dividends; they are the securities in which I myself have invested my money. Well, I am selling out——"
"I beg your pardon, sir?"
"Selling out—realising. I am collecting my money, marshalling my francs, and marching them out of France into England. I propose to do the same with yours."
"But," said I, "is that safe, to have all our money in a foreign country? Suppose that there should be war?"
The Vicomte laughed.
"You have said the words. Suppose there should be war? France would be smashed like a ball of glass—ouf. Do you think I am blind? At the Tuileries, at the Quai d'Orsay, they speak of M. le Vicomte de Chatellan as a very nice man, perhaps, but out of date—out of date; at the War Minister's it is the same—out of date. Meanwhile, I know the machine. I have counted the batteries of artillery and the regiments of the line on paper, and I have counted them in the field, and contrasted the difference. Not that I care a halfpenny for the things in themselves, but they are the protectors of my money; and as such I look after them. I have reviewed the personality of the people at the Tuileries—not that I care a halfpenny for their psychological details, but they are the stewards of my money; and I examine their physiognomies and their lives to see if they are worthy of trust. I look at society—not that I care a halfpenny for the morals of society, but because the health of society is essential to the health of the State. Now, what do I see? I speak not from any moral standpoint, but just as a man speaks who is anxious about the safety of his money. What do I see? Widespread corruption; peculators hiding peculators—from the man who hides the rotten army contract at the Ministry of War to the man who hides the rottenness of the fodder in the barrack-stable. Widespreadcorruption; Ministers the servants of vice, each duller than Jocrisse; marshals as wooden and as useless as their bâtons; skeleton regiments, batteries without cannon, cannon without horses; no esprit; an army of gamins with cigarette-stained fingers and guns in their hands."
The old gentleman, who for seventeen years or so had been in a state of chronic irritation with the Second Empire and its makers, paused in his peregrinations up and down the room, and snapped his fingers. I sat listening in astonishment, for to me, who only saw the varnish and the glitter, France seemed triumphant amongst the nations as the Athena of the Parthenon amongst statues; and the French Army, from the Cent Gardes at the Tuileries to the drummer-boy of the last line regiment, thene plus ultraof efficacy, splendour, and strength.
He went on:
"Tell me: when you see a house in disorder, bills unpaid, the servants liars and rogues, inefficient and useless, dust swept under the beds, and nothing clean about the place except perhaps the windows and the door-handle: whom do you accuse but the master and the mistress? A nation is a house, and France is a nation. I say no more. I have been a guest at the Tuileries; and it is not for me, who have partaken of their hospitality, to speak against the rulers of France. But I will not allow them to play ducks and drakes with my money. In short, my friend, in my opinion my money is no longer safe in France, and I am going to move it to a place of safety. I havebeen uneasy for some time, but of late I am not uneasy—I am frightened.I smell disaster."
He did.
Now, in October, 1869, from evidence in my possession, the fate of France was already definitely fixed. Bismarck had decided on war. He had not the slightest enmity toward France, nothing but contempt for her and for the wretched marionettes playing at Royalty in the Tuileries. He was assisting at the birth of the great German Empire, that giant who in a short twelve months was to leap living and armed from the womb of Time. The destruction of France was the surgical operation necessary for the birth—that was all. In October, 1869, the last rivets of the giant's armour were being welded.
My guardian knew nothing of this; yet that extraordinary man had already scented the coming ruin, guessing from the corruption around him the birds of prey beyond the frontier.
"Thank you!" said he, when I had given him permission to deal with my fortunes as his judgment dictated. "And now you have just time to dress for dinner. Remember, you are to accompany me to-night to the ball at the Marquis d'Harmonville's."
I went off to my own rooms not overjoyed. Society functions never appealed to me, and balls were my detestation, for then my lameness was brought into evidence. Condemned not to dance, it was bitter to see other young people enjoying themselves, and to have to stand by and watch them, pretending to oneself not to care. My lameness, though I have dweltlittle upon it, was the bane of my life. I fancied that everyone noticed it, and either pitied me or ridiculed me. It was a bitter thing, tainting all my early manhood; it made me avoid young people, and people of the opposite sex. I have seen girls looking at me, and have put their regard down to ridicule or pity—fool that I was!
Joubert put out my evening clothes. Joubert of late had grown more testy than ever, and more domineering. He spent his life in incessant warfare with Beril, the factotum of my guardian; and the extra acidity that he could not vent on Beril he served up to me. But it was the business of Eloise and Franzius (that lot, as he called them) which he had now, to use a vulgar expression, in his nose.
"Not those boots," said I, as he took a pair of patent-leather boots from their resting-place. "Dancing shoes!"
"Dancing shoes!" said Joubert, putting the boots back. "Ah, yes; I forgot that monsieur was a dancer."
"You forgot no such thing, for you know very well I do not dance, but one does not go to a ball in patent-leather boots. You like to fling my lameness in my face. You are turning into vinegar these times. I will pension you, and send you off to the country to live, if M. le Vicomte does not do what he has threatened to do."
"And what may that be?" asked the old fellow, with the impudent air of a naughty child.
"He says he'll put you and Beril in a sack and dropyou in the Seine, if he has any more trouble with the pair of you—always fighting like a couple of old cats."
"Old, indeed!" replied Joubert. "Ma foi! it well becomes a young man like the Vicomte to think of age! And did I make you lame? More likely it was a curse from one of that lot——"
"Here!" I said, "give me the hair-brushes, and leave 'that lot,' as you call them alone."
I wondered to myself what Joubert would have said had he known the real cause of my lameness, but I had never spoken to anyone of the child, so like little Carl, the mysterious child who had lured me through the bushes into the hidden gravel-pit. If I had, what ammunition it would have given him against "that lot," as he was pleased to call anyone who had been present at the Schloss Lichtenberg that September nine years ago!
I dined tête-à-tête with my guardian, then we played a game of écarté; and at ten o'clock, the carriage being at the door, we departed for the Marquis d'Harmonville's in the Avenue Malakoff.
It was a very big affair; the Avenue Malakoff was lined with carriages; and we, wedged between the carriage of the Countess de Pourtalès and that of the Russian Ambassador, had time on our hands, during which the Vicomte, irritated by the loss of five louis at écarté and the slowness of the queue, continued his strictures on the social life of Paris and the condition of France.
We passed up the stairs, between a double bank of flowers; and despite the condition of the social life ofParis and the state of France, the scene was very lovely.
The great ballroom—with its scheme of white and gold, its crystal candelabra and its extraordinarily beautiful ceiling, in which, as in a snowstorm, the ice spirits whirled in a fantastic dance—might have been the ballroom in the palace of the Ice Queen but for the warmth, the banks of white camellias, and the music of M. Strauss's band.
Following my usual custom, I cast round for someone whom I could bore with my conversation, a fellow-wall-flower; and it was not long before I lit on M. de Présensé, a friend of my guardian, one of those old gentlemen who go everywhere, know everything, talk to everybody, and from whom everyone tries to escape. Delighted to obtain a willing listener, M. de Présensé, who did not dance, drew me into a corner and pointed out the notabilities. We had mounted to a kind of balcony, and presently, when M. de Présensé was engaged in conversation with a lady of his acquaintance, I stood alone and looked down on the assembled guests.
Recalling them now, and recalling the Vicomte's strictures, it seems strange enough that amidst the guests were most of those who, fatuously playing into Bismarck's hands, brought war and the destruction of war on France; all, nearly, of the undertakers of the Second Empire's funeral were there. The Duc d'Agenor de Gramont; Benedetti, who happened to be in Paris at that time; Marshal Lebœuf, that ruinous fool the clap of whose portfolio cast on the counciltable at Saint-Cloud was answered by the mobilisation of the German Army; Vareigne, the Palace Prefect of the Tuileries; and, to complete the collection, Baron Jérome David, destined to be the first recipient of the news of Sedan.
I was looking on and listening, amused and interested by old M. de Présensé's descriptions, that were not destitute of barbs and points, when through the crowd in my direction, walking beside my old enemy the Comte de Coigny, came a young man.
A young man, pale, very handsome, with an air of distinction which marked him at once as a person above other people, a distinction which, starlike, reduced the surrounding crowd to the level of wax lights and the function of D'Harmonville to a bourgeois rout. He was dressed in simple evening attire, without jewellery or adornment of any description, except an order set in brilliants, a point of sparkling light which gave the last touch to a picture worthy of the brush of Vandyck or Velasquez.
"Quick!" I said, plucking old M. Présensé by the sleeve. "That young man with the Comte de Coigny: who is he?"
"That!—ma foi—he is Baron Carl von Lichtenberg, the new attaché at the Prussian Embassy. Oh, yes; he is the sensation of the moment in Paris. The women rave about him——"
But I did not hear what more the old man may have said, for at that moment Von Lichtenberg, as they called him, looking in my direction, caught my eye and halted dead, with his hand on De Coigny's arm.
He seemed stricken with paralysis; the words he had just been saying to his companion withered on his lips; we stared at each other for ten seconds; then De Coigny, glancing in my direction, broke the spell, and, pulling old Présensé by the arm, I retired precipitately through an alcove which led to the cardroom.
I was terrified, shocked. Terrified as an animal which suddenly finds itself trapped in a gin; shocked as a man who sees a ghost.
All the nameless excitement and soul-terror that had filled me for a moment as a child when Gretel, in the gallery of the Schloss, had held the light to the portrait of Margaret von Lichtenberg, were mine now again, for the face I had just seen was hers. The Baron Carl von Lichtenberg was little Carl.
I said "Good-evening," to M. Présensé, escaped through the cardroom door, got my hat and coat from the attendants, and found myself in the street.
I walked fast as one who would try to escape from his fate.
Icouldnot but see the cards being dealt by some mysterious hand; I could not but remember that Von Lichtenberg, a nobleman, a man of honour, the friend of his King, and presumably sane, had three times attempted my assassination when I was a child, to shield little Carl from some terrible evil at my hands; and look, to-night, whom had I met?
Then, Franzius, entering my life as he had done, and Eloise, like the people on the stage who are seen in the first act of the drama, to reappear in the last act, helping to form the tragic tableau on which the curtain falls.
But the terror and repulsion in my mind rose not from these things; it came like a breath from afar; it came like a breath from the unknown, from the time remote in the past when lived Margaret von Lichtenberg, the woman murdered by Philippe de Saluce.
I walked hurriedly, not caring whither I went; the sounds and lights of Paris surrounded me, but my spirit was not there. It was in the gardens of Lichtenberg, walking with Eloise and little Carl; it was in the picture-gallery, gazing at the portrait of thedead-and-gone Margaret, beneath which was the little portrait of Philippe de Saluce, so horribly like myself; it was in the windy bell-tower where the Man in Armour stood with his iron hammer before the iron bell; I saw again the duel in the forest, and Von Lichtenberg lying in the arms of General Hahn, and I heard again the slobbering of the torches, the wind in the pine-trees, and the far-off barking of the fox in the wood.
Ah, yes; all that might have something to do with me, but beyond all that I refused my fate. I refused to believe that the dead Margaret had a hold upon me—the last of the Mahons, who was also the last of the Saluces; the horrible whispered suggestion: "AreyouPhilippe de Saluce returned? Wereyouonce in that old time the murderer of Margaret? And is she—is she little Carl?" This I refused; that I would not listen to; this I abhorred, as a whisper from the devil, as a blasphemy against God's goodness and against life.
"I have never done harm to any man!"
"Or woman?" queried the whisperer, whose voice seemed my own voice, just as in that story of Edgar Poe's the voice of William Wilson found an echo in his double.
"Or woman? Ah, yes—Eloise—a moment of passion——"
"A moment of passion murdered Margaret de Saluce."
"But God is good; He does not create to torture; He does not bring the dead back to confront them with their crimes."
"Know you that there is a God?" replied the whisperer. "And not a Fate working inexorably and by law?"
"Cease!" I replied, "Let there be a Fate. I am a living man with a will. No dead fate working by law shall drag me against my will, or move me to another purpose than my own. I will not—I will not!"
This mental dialogue had brought me a long way. I was called to my senses by a bright light illuminating what seemed a river of blood stretching across the pavement.
It was a red carpet, and the great house from whose door it was laid down was the Prussian Embassy.
A carriage, flanked by a squadron of Cent Gardes, was at the pavement, and a man was leaving the Embassy.
It was Napoleon, who had been dining privately with the Prussian Ambassador. He was in evening dress, covered by a dark overcoat; his hat-brim was over his eyes, and he held a cigarette between his lips. When Napoleon wore his hat in this fashion, with the brim covering his eyes like a penthouse, the whole figure of the man became sinister and full of fate.
I would sooner a flock of black birds had crossed my path than that mysterious figure in the broad-brimmed, tall hat, beneath which in the darkness the profile showed vaguely, yet distinctly, like the profile on some time-battered coin of Imperial Rome, some coin on which the Imperial face alone remains asking the dweller in a new age: Who is this?
I watched him getting into his carriage and the carriage driving away, surrounded by the glittering sabres of the Cent Gardes; then I returned home.
This, it will be remembered, was the night of the 1st of October.
* * * * *
On the 4th of October, three days after, I was sitting at my club, reading a newspaper, when the Comte de Brissac proposed a game of écarté.
I take cards seriously; the gain or loss of money is nothing to me beside the gain or loss of the game. That is why, perhaps, I am often successful.
There were several other players in the room, and a good many loungers looking on at the games, several around our table, of whom I did not take the slightest notice, so immersed was I in the play.
I lost. Never had I such bad luck. The cards declared themselves against me; some evil influence was at work. At the end of half an hour, during a pause in the game, and after having lost a good sum of money to De Brissac, I looked up, and for the first time noticed the people around us. Right opposite to me, standing behind De Brissac, and looking me full in the face, was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg.
The surprising thing was that I was not surprised. My unconscious self seemed to have recognised the fact that he was there all the time, whilst the conscious self was sublimely indifferent to everything but the cards.
Then I did just what I would have done had a cry of "Fire" been raised—cast my cards on the table,and left the room, walking hurriedly, but not so hurriedly as to express what the old Marquis d'Ampreville once described as ungentlemanly alarm.
Now, Lichtenberg was not a member of the Mirlitons; and as I was a pretty regular frequenter of the place during certain hours of the day, and as he had taken his place at the card-table at which I was playing, the suggestion became almost a certainty that he had come there to meet me.
"I am a living man with a will. No dead Fate working by law shall drag me against my will or move me to another purpose than my own." I had said that on the night of the 1st of October. Well, there was something more than a dead Fate here, a thing working by law. There was the will of Von Lichtenberg; and as I walked down the Boulevard des Italiens, away from the club, the gin seemed to have closed more tightly around me.
It is unpleasant to feel not that you are going to meet your fate, but that your fate is coming to meet you; to swim from a danger, yet find the tide slowly and remorselessly driving you towards it.
Now, what was this danger I dreaded? Impossible to say; but I felt surely in my soul that far more destructive to my happiness and my life than Vogel, or the fantastic old woman who lived in the wood and made whistles of glass, silver, and gold for children to play upon, was this man Carl von Lichtenberg. That, just as Eloise had brought me the flowers of childhood perfumed and dew-wet in her hands, Carl von Lichtenberg was bringing me flowers from anunknown land, flowers scentless as immortelles, sorrowful as death.
Why should I, young and happy, and rich, with all the joy of life in me, with a clear conscience and a healthy mind: why should I be troubled by the tragic and the fateful? As day by day men turn the pages of their life-story, men ask of God this question, receiving only the Author's reply: "Read on."
The next day I had the extra knowledge that not only was Von Lichtenberg's will against me, but the tattle of fools.
The affair at the Mirlitons had been talked about. The loungers about the card-table had seen me look up, stare at the Baron, fling my cards down, and leave the room.
I had, it seemed, put a public affront on him.
My guardian told me of the talk.
"Paris is a whispering gallery," said the old gentleman, "filled with fools. They put the thing down to the fact of the duel between your father and Baron Imhoff. The whole thing is unfortunate; the relations of the Saluces and the Lichtenbergs have always been unfortunate; yet the two families have had an attraction for each other, to judge by the intermarriages. Still, this young Baron Carl seems quite a nice person, a nobleman of the old type, a man of distinction and presence——"
"You have met him?"
"I was introduced at D'Harmonville's ball. Yes; quite a nobleman of the old school; and it seems apity that you should bear him any grudge on account of the unfortunate fact that Baron Imhoff——"
"I don't. I don't hold him responsible for the fact that Baron Imhoff killed my father. I have no grudge against him."
"I am glad to hear that," said the Vicomte; and two days later he invited Von Lichtenberg to dinner with me!
I did not come to that dinner. I was a living man with a will of my own. (How that phrase haunts me like satiric laughter!) I would pursue my own course; and no dead Fate would drag me against my will, or move me to another purpose except my own.
I dined at the Café de Paris with a friend, and as I was coming away whom should I meet but my old enemy the Comte de Coigny!
This gentleman was flushed with wine; he was descending the stairs with two ladies, and when he saw me he started. We had not spoken for years, yet he came forward to introduce himself.
When we had exchanged a few platitudes, he turned to the matter that was evidently the motive-power of his civility.
"I am surprised to see you here to-night," said he, "for my friend M. le Baron von Lichtenberg told me he was to dine with you."
"He told you wrong."
"Ah! just so. I thought there was some mistake; he would scarcely be dining with you after the affair at the Mirlitons."
"M. de Coigny," I replied, "I know of nothing thatgives you the warrant to introduce yourself into my private affairs. I dine where I choose, do what I please; and should anyone question my actions they do so at their own peril."
Then I turned on my heel and left the café with my friend.
"Another man would send you his seconds in reply to that," said my friend.
"And why not De Coigny?"
"Oh, he is a coward. But he is also a bad man. Be on your guard, for he will try to do you an evil turn."
I laughed, and told him of the occurrence when, years ago, I had made De Coigny's nose to bleed in the gardens of the Hôtel de Morny.
"All the same," replied he, "be on your guard."
Next day I had a very unpleasant interview with my guardian. I had not only insulted Von Lichtenberg, it seems, but I had also hit the convenances a foul blow. Hit them below the belt, in fact.
"Ah, yes," said the old gentleman, "I try to do the best for you, and see your return! In my own house, too! And to receive the message that you were dining out only an hour before he was expected, giving me no time to make excuses!"
"What did he say?" I asked.
"Say!" burst out M. le Vicomte. "He said nothing. Ah, if I had been in his place! But, no. He only looked sad and depressed. Had he been a girl instead of a man, a girl in love with you, monsieur, he could not have taken the matter with more quietness or with more sad restraint. Say! Ah, yes, I will tell youwhat he said, what we said. I will give you the dialogue:
"'I had hoped to meet someone else.' That was what he said.
"And I: 'Alas! monsieur, Fate has ordained us to a solitude à deux.'
"I did not mention your name, monsieur, for in mentioning your name I would have mentioned a person who had disgraced me."
"Very well," said I. "I will disgrace you no longer. I will leave Paris to-morrow, and go to Nice."
This determination I carried out next day.
Now, under the tragic cloak of the story, under all these evasions of mine and this pursuit of Von Lichtenberg, there lay a lovely comedy, of which I, one of the chief actors, was utterly ignorant of the motive and the extraordinary dénouement. But this, if you have not guessed it, you will see presently.
I went to Nice. I had never been South before; I had never seen the white, white roads, the black shadows, the green olives, the leaping palms; I had never seen the oranges glowing like dim golden lamps amidst the glossy green leaves; and it seemed to me that I had never seen the blue of sky or the blue of sea before I entered that Paradise.
It is all changed now. The Avenue de la Gare from a road in heaven has become a street in a town; vulgarity and wealth have done their work; and to-day you may buy a diamond necklace of M. Marx, where, in 1869, under a plane-tree, sat the old woman who sold peeled oranges for a sou a dozen.